Barnaby

The comic strip Barnaby by Crockett Johnson (best known today for his children's books, such as Harold and the Purple Crayon) featured an almost cherubic-looking five-year-old and his far-from-cherubic fairy godfather, Mr. O'Malley, a short, cigar-smoking man with four tiny wings. Barnaby got in a fair number of scrapes, but most of them were either of Mr. O'Malley's making or resulted in embarrassment of some sort for the rather clumsy fairy godfather.

Barnaby's parents deny that Mr. O'Malley is real and take Barnaby to a number of child psychologists. They continue this denial even when Mr. O'Malley is seen flying past their picture window, when he walks into their living room, and even after Mr. O'Malley is elected their representative to Congress.

The strip ended when Barnaby finally reached his sixth birthday, the magical point beyond which he could no longer have a fairy godfather. With much regret, Mr. O'Malley left, and so (after a short-lived attempt in the 1960s to revive the strip by redoing the original stories) did Johnson, to pursue other interests.

Selected strips from Barnaby were re-published in the 1960s by Dover Books, and later reprints from the 1980s still command high prices from used book sellers.